Man, Grief is Something Else

Man, grief is something else. I don’t think, at least for me, that I have in my entire sixty years of living ever experienced so profoundly…a loss such as this one. Losing Paul, my person, my best friend and the only person I could really talk to about anything… my constant companion for over 34 years is truly heart wrenching. There is such a vast hole in my life now.

My observation, in this moment as I sit here, trying to do something, anything to release the pain I’m feeling, is that there are so many other kinds of grief embroiled within the grief of losing Paul…layers upon layers of grief. It piles on me so heavily sometimes (like right now) that I cannot breathe. I don’t know what to do with it. I long and yearn for all of the ways we lived together. The tiny little insignificant, somewhat minute details that made up our life together…they are all of sudden magnified. I look back and realize that every millisecond of my relationship with Paul was so much more a part of a beautiful bigger picture. It’s spectacular, really. To think about it. To absorb the parts. All together at once. This is why grief devastates. It’s too enormous to understand.

It takes all of the tiny sinews and vessels which linked us together and splatters them up against the wall all at once for my viewing. Here I remain, just standing here, alone, facing this large screen which is flashing still and moving pictures of our entire life together over and over and over again. Frame after frame of moments…from the tiniest brush of a hand, to the large; a longed for wedding, magical births, special dinners, smiles and laughter, and a tear before a profession of love. Suddenly it shifts to a child’s laughter, a game played, a song or two sung in harmony, a moment of caring…there it all is, swirling around me like a familiar melody. I want so much to languish in it, pick up its rhythm with my entire being, moving to the tempo which used to be our life, and be able to touch all sides of it, falling into it…in reverie.

Somethings stops me. Truth, I guess. Reality. Suddenly I am pulled out of the misty world of love and happiness and into the dark, stirring around in my emptiness. Alone…holding audience to my previous life with no way to rewind. A gut wrenching evisceration of an entire experience I can never, ever have back. There it is on a full screen…my hands, heart, mind and soul reach out for something wonderful and it is gone…forever. I have no control. I have all of the memories of Paul in my heart forever…YES…but sometimes it all feels like a dream. I can’t seem to get past this sadness and this unique depression. I try to find solace in new things, painting…writing…whatever I can grab hold of, but NONE of it takes me to where I want to be. I am at war with myself. I don’t know what to do next or where to go. I know this, I don’t want to be where I am. Sometimes I worry that I will never be over this. It’s been ten months and I’m sure there are those that think that is a long time, but I cannot start over. We were together since 1985 and it will never be long enough to unwind our love. I am stuck here. How does one get past an experience of a lifetime with the perfect person for me? I can’t seem to move on. I don’t want to and yet I want to because I can’t feel like this forever. I thought I was a strong person…resilient, but I was wrong.

I don’t want to be audience to my old life. I want to be on the screen holding his beautiful heart in mine and mine in his. That’s what I want. I don’t want to feel lost. It’s not who I am. Was.